WordPress is one of the most powerful and definitely popular Content Management Systems (CMS) used today. Ever since its release in the public, it has gained a widespread popularity to many IT and computer enthusiasts. WordPress is a CMS designed with a very strong support system. It contains powerful and useful features and tools plus being an open-source system and it still has a lot of room for improvements.
For that and through all these years, it has now become even more advanced, powerful and improved with features you can definitely use. One feature of WordPress that you can take advantage of is the Plugins. Plugins are very useful as if offers a lot of varying functionalities that can literally make life easy for you. Definitely one of the most useful Plugins available for WordPress is the Redirection Plugin.
Redirection
Redirection is a WordPress plugin that manages redirections, keeps track of errors and mainly tidies up after any loose ends that your site may have. It is a plugin that is useful especially when you want to move some pages from your old website or perhaps when you are planning to change the directory of your WordPress installation. Redirection is 100% free and its existing features include:
- When a post’s URL changes, Redirection automatically adds a 301 redirection.
- 301, 302 and 307 redirections are added manually for WordPress posts or any file.
- Custom “pass-through” redirections that allow a URL to pass through a website, file or page.
- Capturing a log of 404 errors and then easily map 301 redirects.
- Creating redirections that are based upon a browser, log status, referring site or URL.
- A full regular expression support.
- Fully localized system.
- Exports all redirections to XML, CSV or Apache .htaccess files.
- Index.php, index.html, and index.htm access redirection.
- Redirection statistics which tells user the number of times a redirection has occurred, the last it happened, who has tried to do it and where the URL can be found.
- Available in various languages such as English, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and many others.
- A full logs of all redirected URLs.
- All URLs can be redirected.
- Redirection methods – redirects based on login status, random pages and the referrer.
Installation
Installation of Redirection plugin is as simple as any other WordPress plugin.
- First is to download redirection.zip.
- Unzip.
- Next is uploading to redirection directory to /wp-content/plugins on the server.
- This is followed by activating the plugin.
- Configure the options from Manage to Redirection.
Note: You need to have a permalinks structure setup from WordPress.
If you want to know how to install a WordPress plugin, you can find all the details on the WordPress plugin installation page.
Redirection is better to use than .htaccess because it is easy to use. Redirections here are created automatically whenever a post’s URL changes plus manually adding redirection using WordPress Redirection is also a lot easier compared to .htaccess. What’s more, with Redirection, you can easily track 404 errors. This plugin also works in the same way as how WordPress handles permalinks, so you can expect that it should not result in any visible slowdown to your website.
Redirection Core Concepts
This plugin uses three core concepts which are modules, groups and redirects. A module consists of many groups while groups consist of many redirections. It is the module that determines what way the directions are to be used. A group, on the other hand, allows you to separate the redirections to logical units and the redirection is what represents an action performed whenever a certain URL is accessed.
The module basically tells how redirections are implemented and the three types of modules are WordPress, Apache and 404 errors.
Redirection WordPress Module
WordPress is the default module which means it’s the most compatible and provides most features of Redirection. Although with WordPress module, for each time that you redirect a URL, you will need to load the WordPress as opposed to Apache where redirection occurs even before the WordPress loads.
How to use Redirection
In Redirection, the idea is to create several URLs which you would want to redirect. To do that, the URLs are placed inside a group, which is then placed inside a module. The module is the one that will determine how these URLs are to be redirected while the group allows you to arrange the URLs logically.
Every redirection of URL can be configured to behave in varying ways and when you create a redirection, you will need to provide some information such as:
- Source URL, which is the original URL you are going to redirect.
- Action, which tells what will happen when the URL is matched.
- Match, which directs the plugin on how you want the source URL to match.
- Regular expression, which tells the plugin whether the source URL is a regular expression or a pattern that can match many URLs.
- Target URL, which is commonly the URL that you are likely to be redirected when there is a pattern match.
WordPress Redirection Plugin is a very useful plugin to manage your redirections as well as keep track of your 404 errors. Additionally, it can easily detect bizarre query strings and coding mistakes plus using this also lets you know more things like your IP address. With WordPress Redirection, it becomes easy to redirect your files or URLs with its many features. Now that it is available in over 20 languages, even non-English speakers are able to use it.
With this plugin, your redirections are a lot easier and automatic, so you can just relax while using it. Its many features and many versions provide you with a lot of options which makes it a better and promising WordPress tool. Using WordPress Redirection will truly be a big help once you have familiarized yourself with how it’s used. This is WordPress plugin that will definitely make your life easier.
